WHITEHALL TOWNSHIP, MI – A successful fund-raising campaign
means that the construction will soon begin on Hilt's Landing Michigan's
Heritage Park, a 19-acre trail and open-air museum site being developed by the
Lakeshore Museum Center.

The public is invited
to a ceremonial groundbreaking 4 p.m. Aug. 28 at the north road end of Durham
Road in Whitehall Township. Attendees of the groundbreaking will be able to walk along a path
where a handicap-accessible trail will be built, and interact with interpreters
in period dress, where exhibits will be built.

The project has been in the planning stage for about five years. Construction is likely to begin in October, with buildings completed
throughout the winter and following summer, and a grand opening in June 2015.

The project will cost $1.7 million to construct, according
to Lakeshore Museum Director John McGarry. The
board of directors decided to start construction after more than 90 percent of
the funds needed for the project were raised.

Lakeshore Museum Center board member Bob Scolnik said he
gives credit to McGarry for raising the money so fast.

"For a non-profit executive, he just did an exceptional job,"
Scolnik said. "I've never seen anything quite like that – not that amount of
money, and not in that period of time."

The museum is still raising money from the public to top off
construction costs and also for an endowment that would support some of the
wages for the staff manning the park. There will also be a ticket fees for
entering Hilt's Landing once it is complete.

The park will have a 0.5-mile, handicap-accessible loop trail
with eight historical exhibits along the way from 10,000 years of Michigan
History, McGarry said. The tour starts with
an exhibit of pre-historic mastodons, and ends with a modern farm house. Exhibits
in between describe American Indians, fur traders, settlers, civil war camps
and the logging industry in Michigan.

The trail runs through a wooded area but a grassy area in
the middle will be used to host a variety of events such as Civil War
re-enactments.

At most of the sites, there will be opportunities for
families to participate in an activity related to the historical subject, for
instance, building a birch bark basket at an Indians' wigwam. The focus on interactive exhibits has become
the standard at the historical sites and buildings operated by the Lakeshore
Museum Center.

"We're completely re-focusing away from the old-style
historian, and we've re-focused on the family," McGarry said.

The park's open is expected to be an economic boost for
tourism in the Whitehall/Montague area, especially
given the synergy from nearby Michigan's Adventure amusement park. McGarry estimates that Hilt's
Landing park could add as much as $3 million a year in tourism business to the
area, by drawing in new customers and giving them another reason to stay longer
in the area.

"The key is to design these programs so that they stay
overnight," he said, so that families eat at local restaurants and sleep in
local hotels.

"We're confident it will add dollars to our economy," said Amy Van Loon, executive director of the White Lake Area Chamber of Commerce.
"It'll be a different kind of tourism. ... It's going to offer such a wide
variety of history."

The 19 acres used by the museum is just one part of about 230 acres formerly
owned by the Hilt family. The family sold the property to the county in 1979,
then helped Whitehall Township buy it back in 2007 for $300,000 -- $200,000
of which came from the Hilt Foundation.

McGarry said the rest of the land will eventually be opened up for hiking
and fishing – but not hunting or camping.